Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can

by Varshini Prakash, Guido Girgenti

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

What IS the Green New Deal? Does it resonate? Do I agree? Or disagree? With only weeks before the 2020 election, now is the time to delve deeper than the headlines and hyperbole. This carefully curated collection of essays by environmentalists, thinkers, writers, critics, journalists and economists provides the why, what and how for the Green New Deal movement and a clear outline of what is at stake. It is thought-provoking, inspirational and practical.

An urgent and definitive collection of essays from leaders and experts championing the Green New Deal—and a detailed playbook for how we can win it—including contributions by leading activists and progressive writers like Varshini Prakash, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Bill McKibben, Rev William Barber II, and more.

In October 2018, scientists warned that we have less than 12 years left to transform our economy away from fossil fuels, or face catastrophic climate change. At that moment, there was no plan in the US to decarbonize our economy that fast. Less than two years later, every major Democratic presidential candidate has embraced the vision of the Green New Deal—a rapid, vast transformation of our economy to avert climate catastrophe while securing economic and racial justice for all.

What happened? A new generation of leaders confronted the political establishment in Washington DC with a simple message: the climate crisis is here, and the Green New Deal is our last, best hope for a livable future. Now comes the hard part: turning that vision into the law of the land.

In Winning a Green New Deal, leading youth activists, journalists, and policymakers explain why we need a transformative agenda to avert climate catastrophe, and how our movement can organize to win. Featuring essays by Varshini Prakash, cofounder of Sunrise Movement; Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Green New Deal policy architect; Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize–winning economist; Bill McKibben, internationally renowned environmentalist; Mary Kay Henry, the President of the Service Employees International Union, and others we’ll learn why the climate crisis cannot be solved unless we also confront inequality and racism, how movements can redefine what’s politically possible and overcome the opposition of fossil fuel billionaires, and how a Green New Deal will build a just and thriving economy for all of us.

For anyone looking to understand the movement for a Green New Deal, and join the fight for a livable future, there is no resource as clear and practical as Winning the Green New Deal.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982142438
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	08/25/2020
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	1,025,342
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Varshini Prakash is the executive director and cofounder of the Sunrise Movement and a leading voice for young Americans in the fight to stop climate change. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, on the BBC, and more. Varshini was one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People and Forbes’s 30 Under 30 in 2019. She currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Guido Girgenti is the Media Director for Justice Democrats and a founding Board Member of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led movement to stop climate change and win a Green New Deal. He is a lifelong organizer for racial, economic, and climate justice, and lives in his hometown of Brooklyn, NY.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Adults in the Room Varshini Prakash vii

Editors' Note Varshini Prakash Guido Girgenti xxi

Part I The Crisis They Won't Let Us Solve 1

1 The Crisis Here and Now David Wallace-Wells 3

"Paradise-may it be all its name implies," Mikala Butson 12

2 We Didn't Start the Fire Kate Aronoff 14

3 Market Fundamentalism at the Worst Time Naomi Klein 27

4 Averting Climate Collapse Requires Confronting Racism Ian Haney López 38

Part II Green New Deal Visions and Policies 53

5 How We Got to the Green New Deal Bill McKibben 55

6 Policies and Principles of a Green New Deal Rhiana Gunn-Wright 67

7 The Economic Case for a Green New Deaf Joseph Stiglitz 94

8 A Green New Deal for the Gulf South Colette Pichon Battle 107

Money smelled like mountains of oyster shells rotting in the sun Genai Lewis 118

9 Green New Bingo Hall Julian Brave NoiseCat 120

10 A Workers' Green New Deal Mary Kay Henry 126

Part III Organizing to Win the Green New Deal 135

11 People Power and Political Power Varshini Prakash 137

Together, we part the sea Jeremy Ornstein 164

12 We Shine Bright: Organizing in Hope and Song Sara Blazevic Victoria Fernandez Dyanna Jaye Aru Shiney-Ajay 166

Blue skies in America Saya Ameli Hajebi 197

13 A Third Reconstruction for Our Common Home Rev. William J. Barber II 199

14 The Next Era of American Politics Guido Girgenti Waleed Shahid 212

15 From Protest to Primaries: The Movement in the Democratic Party Alexandra Rojas Waleed Shahid 241

16 Reviving Labor, in New Deals Old and Green Bob Master 262

Organize. Vote. Strike Varshini Prakash 278

Acknowledgments 283

Notes 287

Index 343

Editorial Reviews

06/22/2020

Climate activists Prakash and Girgenti present a stirring essay collection in support of the Green New Deal. Prakash introduces the anthology by detailing a 2018 sit-in at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, which spurred congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to release a proposal for “a comprehensive program of reform to halt climate change while creating good jobs and reducing inequality.” The collection’s big-name contributors include Naomi Klein (On Fire), who explains the role of “deregulated capitalism” in the climate crisis; Joseph Stiglitz (People, Power, and Profits), who makes the economic case for the Green New Deal; and Rev. William Barber II (The Third Reconstruction), who draws parallels to post–Civil War reconstruction and the civil rights movement. The anthology also features instructive and moving testimony from people directly affected by the consequences of climate change, including a young woman whose hometown of Paradise, Calif., was destroyed by wildfire. By selecting contributors wisely, Prakash and Girgenti offer both a comprehensive representation of the climate movement and a practical road map for change. Young progressives will be especially affected by this impassioned and eloquent plea for progress. Agent: Anthony Arnove, Roam Agency. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] stirring essay collection in support of the Green New Deal...By selecting contributors wisely, Prakash and Girgenti offer both a comprehensive representation of the climate movement and a practical road map for change. Young progressives will be especially affected by this impassioned and eloquent plea for progress." —Publishers Weekly

"With strong contributions from a superb cast of contributors...this is the volume that should serve as the definitive introduction to the Green New Deal and the coalition of movements behind it." —The Nation

"These incisive essays provide a clear blueprint for creating solutions regarding the climate crisis, standing up for appropriate representation, and uniting disparate forces to build a better world." —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2020-05-30
Founders and supporters of the progressive Sunrise Movement join forces to argue for the Green New Deal.

In this urgent collection, edited by Sunrise leaders Prakash and Girgenti, the contributions cohere into a difficult-to-disparage—logically, at least, if not politically—argument for immediate change. “The Green New Deal,” writes Rhiana Gunn-Wright, who helped create the concept with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “is a proposal for a ten-year economic mobilization to rapidly transition the U.S. to a zero-carbon economy, and in doing so to regenerate and reorganize the U.S. economy in ways that significantly reduce inequality and redress legacies of systemic oppression.” She continues later, “[it] is a new policy vision—one that will guide government and society through the biggest task in modern history: decarbonizing our global economy within the next ten to twenty years.” It seems like an inarguable, necessary proposition, but not in a political system that perpetuates economic inequality and ensures that the poor stay poor and the rich get richer. Addressing politics, science, economics, racism, and income inequality, among other topics, the contributors eviscerate the opposition to a movement that could not only change everything for the better, but save a world moving toward extinction. Though the reading is sometimes intellectually intense to the point of exhaustion, the editors wisely break up the rhetoric with personal stories from people whose regions will be inevitably affected by climate change. There are also moving personal narratives from the children who occupied Nancy Pelosi’s office in 2018. Arrested by Capitol Police, they earned acclaim from Ocasio-Cortez and others. These incisive essays provide a clear blueprint for creating solutions regarding the climate crisis, standing up for appropriate representation, and uniting disparate forces to build a better world. Among the other contributors are Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, William Barber II, Joseph Stiglitz, Kate Aronoff, and David Wallace-Wells.

A clear demonstration that the kids are all right. Now lead, follow, or get out of their way.

Kirkus Reviews